How this identity came about: a briefing, 3 discarded directions, and a fourth that held. What you see on this page are not illustrations — they are the values every page of this site is built from.
At the start there was no moodboard but a briefing: who reads the page, what it has to prove, what it must not be. Positioning, audience and tone were settled before a single colour was chosen.
Then 3 directions were built, each a complete static preview of the start page and /studio, built on the real German text rather than on placeholder copy. All 3 managed without webfonts and without a single external call — that was settled before the first sketch.
A was editorial: warm paper, deep ink blue as the accent, Palatino and Optima out of the system stack, and a running marginal column that picked up the figures from the text.
B was emphatically technical: cool slate, blue-black ink, ultramarine not as an accent but as a large flat field. One grotesk in 3 registers. Its signature was a full-bleed slab cutting through the middle of a sentence and inverting the type — in exactly 2 places across both pages. Projects were set as a ledger, status as plain type rather than as a badge.
C was restrained and classical: loden green as the single chromatic voice, again a marginal column as the spine, and the claim in the title carrying its shift of meaning in colour.
All 3 were discarded on the same finding: cleanly executed, wrong on substance. They are still in the repository, each on its own branch — a discarded draft that gets thrown away is lost as evidence.
The fourth direction landed. From there on it was no longer about taste but about precision: type steps, spacing, contrast, behaviour on the phone.
What went into the build in the end was not a picture but the system behind it — colour values, type steps, the spacing grid, components. That is why this page can present its own identity without illustrating it.
Every block renders the real values out of the build, not pictures of them.
The mark has 2 parts: a net that runs out over every edge, and a square inside it. The net is the AI stack, the square is the studio — the one fixed point that does not drift and does not blink while everything around it computes. Only ever a section of it is visible, because the net does not end at the edge.
Motion exists on screen only, once per view only, and never in loops shorter than 3 seconds. Signals travel from node to node, never through the square. Anyone whose system asks for reduced motion sees the resting version — the same fixed snapshot that goes to print on paper.
One accent per application, never 2 side by side. Studio Green (#8BF716) is the house colour; the 4 campaign colours replace it entirely rather than joining it. The accent never carries longer text. Dark is the default for the screen, light the one for print, invoices and email — darkened there so text stays legible. Running text holds at least 4.5:1, labels 3:1.
| Dark | Light | |
|---|---|---|
| Studio Green (house colour) | #8bf716--studio-green13.81:1 | #4d7a00--studio-green-dark4.65:1 |
| Signal yellow | #f7e016--campaign-signalgelb14.00:1 | #8a7500--campaign-signalgelb-dark4.12:1 |
| Turquoise | #16f7c8--campaign-tuerkis13.59:1 | #0a8a70--campaign-tuerkis-dark3.90:1 |
| Clay | #c98a3d--campaign-lehm6.44:1 | #8a5a1e--campaign-lehm-dark5.35:1 |
| Magenta | #e0119d--campaign-magenta4.24:1 | #b00c7a--campaign-magenta-dark5.99:1 |
| Dark | Light | |
|---|---|---|
| --bg | #0c0e0c | #e9e6da |
| --panel | #101210 | #f6f4ea |
| --line | #22241f | #d7d4c5 |
| --text | #e8e6df15.07:1 | #181a1215.93:1 |
| --muted | #a5a3997.44:1 | #5c5a4e6.29:1 |
| --mid | #8f8d845.65:1 | #6d6b5f4.86:1 |
| --dim | #61645a3.12:1 | #8f8c7f3.06:1 |
| --fliess | #c9c7bd11.10:1 | #33352a11.31:1 |
| --on-ac | #101210 | #101210 |
2 faces with a clear division of labour: Archivo speaks, Fragment Mono records. Mono never appears in running text, Archivo never in status lines. Running text 16 px on 1.6, line length at most 34 em, ragged right, no hyphenation in display sizes. Both families are open source and sit on our own server — not one glyph loads from a third party.
Archivo Variable
--font-display
'Archivo Variable', 'Archivo', ui-sans-serif, system-ui, sans-serif
Fragment Mono
--font-mono
'Fragment Mono', ui-monospace, 'SF Mono', 'Cascadia Mono', monospace
Cutting the net out so that it ends inside the area. Enlarging, rotating or rounding the square, or pushing it into the wordmark. Mixing node colours. Placing the mark on photographs, gradients or patterns. Rules that are written down without being checked are decoration — these ones are in the verification script.
A few days, including 3 discarded directions. The time was not saved by drawing faster but by discarding costing nothing.
The human. The drafts took minutes, the decision about them did not: it called for a judgement about why one direction holds and 3 others do not.
The system as code: colour values, type steps, spacing and components. That leaves no gap between the draft and the build.
No. Fonts and graphics sit on our own server, the site sets no cookies and stores nothing on the device.
What follows is not an extract. It is the rulebook every surface of this studio is built to — screen, paper, inbox, textile. The values do not sit beside the page, they are the page: every colour field here carries the colour it names, and every type specimen runs in the step printed above it.
Precise on the matter, warm in tone. We write in whole sentences, call things by their name and do without superlatives. Anyone reading us should have the impression of talking to an experienced human being.
The mark consists of 2 parts: a net that runs out over every edge, and a square inside it. The net is the AI stack, the square is the studio — the one fixed point that does not drift and does not blink while everything around it computes. Only ever a section of it is visible, because the net does not end at the edge.
One accent per application, never 2 side by side. Green is the house colour; the other 4 are campaign colours and replace green entirely rather than joining it. The accent never carries longer text.
Each replaces the house colour entirely. The darkened variant is the one that carries text on a pale field.
| Dark | Light | |
|---|---|---|
| Signal yellow | #f7e016--campaign-signalgelb | #8a7500--campaign-signalgelb-dark |
| Turquoise | #16f7c8--campaign-tuerkis | #0a8a70--campaign-tuerkis-dark |
| Clay | #c98a3d--campaign-lehm | #8a5a1e--campaign-lehm-dark |
| Magenta | #e0119d--campaign-magenta | #b00c7a--campaign-magenta-dark |
The manual's 7 neutrals, each with its token.
#0c0e0c--ink-bg#101210--ink-panel#22241f--ink-line#e8e6df--ink-text#f6f4ea--paper-panel#e9e6da--paper-bg#d7d4c5--paper-lineEvery build recomputes the figures.
| Dark | Light | |
|---|---|---|
| Running text · at least 4.5:1 | 11.10:1 | 11.31:1 |
| Label · at least 3:1 | 3.12:1 | 3.06:1 |
| Accent · at least 3:1 | 13.81:1 | 4.65:1 |
2 typefaces with a clear division of labour: Archivo speaks, Fragment Mono records. Mono never in running text, Archivo never in status lines.
Archivo Variable — 'Archivo Variable', 'Archivo', ui-sans-serif, system-ui, sans-serif
Status · Live · In progress
0123456789 ÄÖÜ ß & % → ↗
Fragment Mono — 'Fragment Mono', ui-monospace, 'SF Mono', 'Cascadia Mono', monospace
Read out of the tokens and converted to a percentage, not transcribed.
Paper is light, the accent stays a detail. Printing is on uncoated natural stock: 120 g for sheets, 600 g duplex for cards.
The body text starts 2 lines below the subject. Margins 25 mm top, 25 mm left, 20 mm right, 20 mm bottom. Fold and punch marks at 87 mm, 105 mm and 192 mm.
Quote, invoice, contract and minutes follow one grid. The mandatory particulars sit in full in the footer, so that the head stays quiet.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Consulting, day rate | 0.00 € |
| Delivery, fixed fee | 0.00 € |
| Total | 0.00 € |
Signature and newsletter run light, because inboxes are light. No images in the signature, no logo as an attachment, no cascades of quoted replies.
Good afternoon,
the documents we discussed are attached. Happy to answer any questions.
Best regards
One paragraph, one thing. In the newsletter the accent appears in the square and as the link colour, nowhere else.
Read on ↗16:9, 4 layouts, no bullet points and no slide transitions. One statement per slide, evidence in the footer.
The dot on the left chest at the front, the full logo at the back. Objects carry the dot only. Screen print, one pass, no effect colours.
Profiles show the square, shared pages the wordmark on anthracite. The website stays the reference for every digital application.
What goes to a printer, a garment maker or an agency goes complete or not at all. These particulars accompany every job.
You are speaking with an AI system. Its answers are generated automatically.
I am Curtis. Which AI model answers is your decision. With every answer you see what a conversation like this costs.
Answering: Studio chooses
Curtis is an AI agent. Only the human makes commitments.This chat stores nothing beyond the session; even so, please do not enter personal data here.
Session ended. New question: close the panel and open it again.